Article from Reason by Brian Doherty.

“I think it’s important that we have dialog between countries that control 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in a press conference call this morning, responding to critics who see something sinister in a U.S. senator traveling to Russia for meetings with politicians there, given that Russia is accused of meddling in U.S. elections.

Paul visited Russia to meet with members of the Russian Federation Council (the nation’s upper legislative body) and Duma, and to deliver a message from President Donald Trump to Russian President Putin, as well as meet with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

He was “excited to announce” that Russian legislators agreed to “continue these discussions” by “coming to Washington after our November election.”

Because of existing U.S. sanctions, some specific Russian legislators cannot enter the United States, a policy Paul hopes to change. He also hopes to to be able to meet further with such barred legislators “in a third party neutral country.”

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons